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The January rains are a little late this year, only coming mid-February, which was great for building show gardens, but not so great for filming a gardening show. Necessarily, shooting gardens happens outside, so we're totally at the mercy of the afternoon Highveld Thunderstorm when it comes to getting pretty pictures of fabulous places in and around our city.
And today was no exception. From a gorgeous little 3 courtyard garden in The Hurst, we headed for Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens, to take in the different sections of development there, specifically the magnificent Succulent rockery that has been put together, and to check out the riot of colours at the Geological walk. What a splendid place (evidenced here by the overuse of superlatives and heightened adjectives!) to go for a great meander.
The trouble started at the foot of the pictureque waterfall, where I was oohing and ahing over the wonderful plantlife up the cliff face, and pondering the possibility of going on the major ramble they have. Now, pictures of nature in the rain still look pretty good, but a presenter being pelted – well, not so much!
With takes in the can (or whatevah they'd call it in this day and age of digital technology) the run back to the restaurant under a scrim still gave us a chance to wonder at all the botanical glory that we have in our little corner of the world, microcosmed in one well thought out and planned space.
But that's not what I wanted to talk about. I'm sure many of you on FB have seen these compositions of “what society thinks I do”, “what I think I do” etc. and arriving home from my shoot today, finally found this one! 'Living in Joburg'. So very very apt – and sure to bring a smile to anybody who lives in Gangsta's Paradise!
And you've gotta laugh at stuff sometime. Life's too short not to quite frankly. Unless you have a husband who's in training for the Cape Epic. Definitely no laughing matter… If anyone's keen to see why I let him do this race for a second time (first time I was an Epic Widow, I swore if there was a second, he'd be an Epic Divorcee), take a look at his road to this long, arduous and dusty race. And if you like the reason why he's doing it, get involved. http://www.friendsofanton.org/cycling-for-anton-hammerl/ – or follow the twits on @antonhammerl – the Tread4 Anton Hammerl Twitter page.
All these meandering thoughts have once again brought me to the realisation that whatever you do, do it fully, with passion – and a whole lot of Seffrican Gung-ho!!!
